Singapore: Right to own a car starts at $76,000. And that doesn’t include the car
Singapore: Right to own a car starts at $76,000. And that doesn’t include the car
Owning a car in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive countries, has always been something of a luxury. But costs have now soared to an all time high.
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good tbh, their metro kicks too much ass to have everyone driving around, their system has it's problems but not driving isn't one of them
Honestly, as much as I wanted a car as a 20-something, I do think this is for the better. There needs to be some adjustments as a lot of the buyers are commercial entities trying to corner a somewhat unsustainable ridehailing market, but overall I'm happy with the tradeoff, especially with the improvement in public transport in recent years.
improvement in public transport in recent years
I've only visited once and that was several years ago, I'm surprised to hear the public transit has actually gotten better. I'm from Chicago, which is one of the few US cities with a functional metro, and it's blown out of the water by the mrt just on comfort alone
Chicago Transit is awesome if you're traveling toward/from downtown but god does it suck if you're traveling across the north or west side. Chicago needs a east and south train from the metro station in Jefferson Park or something
This. Chicago needs a loop line - or given the coastal nature of the place, a crescent line - several kilometers out of downtown.
There was a period in the 2000s when the metro was under maintained and profits were maximised (fuck you Saw Phiak Hwa), where there were times even at 10pm I couldn't get on the train because they were so packed, thanks to horrible intervals between each train. Said undermaintence lead to some pretty bad breakdowns (for Singapore anyway) around the mid-2010s . Ever since then they've increased maintenence, decreased interval times during both peak and off-peak periods, and more lines were also added, though some of them were already being planned in mid-2000s.
The bus system has also improved when they moved to a hybrid model, where government tenders for operators to operate the bus routes, so there's private and public aspects into it.
While not perfect, it's definitely better than the mid-to-late 2000s, and I'm really grateful we have it.
I owned my first car at 17 and oh… the hours I spent waxing it. Unwinding car culture in the US would take a long, long time.
Yea, it would, starting with alternate transport infrastructure, which is also not aided by city design. So yea, there is a ton of work.
what a lot of people can't understand is that a car I'm singapore is a ball and chain. it's not freedom by any stretch of the imagine there.
it's a status symbol or a job requirement.
And why is this exactly?
Has it to do with the close to no parking spots in Singapore? Or something about fuel being expensive or something?
you can visit the entire country on the subway or a short grab ride.
owning registering, parking, repairing and fueling a car is a completely unnecessary living cost, not to mention much much more expensive than the US or Europe.
Well not exactly the entire country, pretty sure people who need to gedong would have a lot to say about that. But most places? Yea definitely. I do have friends who stay in Punggol that don't enjoy squeezing in the trains to head to Buona for work though.
Oh yea, fuel is expensive. It's like more than US$2 per litre now. If this online converter is right, that's more than US$7.60 per gallon.
Yea cars make so little sense there that I’m glad to see they treat it like first class on the airlines: it costs such an exorbitant amount that it’s basically just there to subsidize everyone else.